This summer’s episode in which Quebec radio station CHOI almost
lost its
broadcasting licence over the use of allegedly offensive language has a
lot of
Canadians wondering why we tolerate the continued existence of the
Canadian
Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).

With the advent of the internet and
satellite TV, the CRTC has
already become something of an anachronism.Those who don’t like its protectionist Canadian content
rules or prissy broadcast
standards can escape them by tuning in foreign broadcasts via computer
or
grey-market dish antenna.Upcoming
technological improvements promise to
provide us with even greater opportunities to circumvent the culture
cops.But since most of us still have
radios in our
homes and cars and like to listen occasionally to local news, it will
be a
while before radio broadcasting over the airwaves becomes completely
obsolete.

Radio waves (or rather, broadcast
frequencies) are
considered public property in Canada.The CRTC exists to manage them on behalf of
“the public”.While many Canadians have
taken
the first step of questioning the CRTC’s judgment and motives, few have
gone
beyond that to the more fundamental question:why should the airwaves be public property in the first
place?That’s
just the way things have been for about the past 90 years, and most of
us
simply can’t conceive of any alternative.

But there’s no more justification for the
state to have
nationalized the airwaves than there would be for the state to
nationalize any
other means of communication.Imagine
the outcry there would be if the government announced that henceforth
it would
be the sole legal supplier of newsprint in the country and newspapers
would be
allowed to publish only under government licence, revocable at the
government’s
pleasure.This would be a clearly
unacceptable infringement on freedom of speech.

You can search the CRTC website in vain for
any hint as to
how this came about.Although it
contains a history of broadcasting in Canada going all the way
back to
1852, nowhere does it mention the crucial moment when the government
seized
ownership of the airwaves.It’s
unfathomable to CRTC personnel, I guess, that anyone would care.

The history of the airwaves in the U.S.
is easier to ferret out.In the early
1900s, when radio was in its
infancy, pioneers in the broadcasting field poured money, labour and
ingenuity
into their enterprises. They assumed
they would be able to acquire property rights in the radio frequencies
they had
staked out, just as prospectors can acquire property rights in the
mineral
deposits they discover, and artists get copyrights in the works they
produce.

Signal interference was the obvious problem,
but it wasn’t
long before U.S.
courts began developing a body of jurisprudence in the normal
common-law way to
resolve this issue without state regulation.Some stations worked out contracts with their competitors
regarding frequencies
or broadcasting times, and the courts enforced them.In one prominent case, the court upheld the
notion that a radio station had “homesteaded” its right to a particular
frequency
by prior use, just as merchants acquired rights in trade marks and
trade names
or landowners acquired water rights in adjacent streams.

All of that was lost when the U.S.
came under pressure to sign an
international treaty with other countries, every one of which treated
the
airwaves as national state property. The
U.S.
passed similar legislation eliminating the private property in and
marketability of broadcasting rights.

But some Americans, bless ’em, still harbour
these silly
notions that maybe it’s not a good idea for the state to have the
arbitrary
power to grant and revoke broadcasting licences.Maybe
it’s because their constitution, unlike
ours, protects not only freedom of speech, but also property rights.(Note that if CHOI loses its licence, a $25
million business will instantly vanish into thin air.)

So periodically, some Americans raise the
issue of
privatizing the airwaves again.And every
time it happens, the statists come out of the woodwork ranting about
how awful it would be.Evil multi-national corporations would control all
communications, blah,
blah, blah.

Why these people are so afraid of giant
corporations but not
afraid of giant government is something I have never understood.Corporations, at least, do not have a legal
monopoly on the use of force.

The government-lovers seem totally oblivious
to be to the
role they themselves have played in promoting corporate concentration.They seem to think you can pile laws and
regulations onto businesses ad infinitum,
without consequences.In fact, the
more
burdensome regulations become, the less likely it is that small
businesses will
survive.If it’s a full-time task for
someone to keep up to date with all the labour regulations, the tax
regulations, the human rights laws, the broadcast regulations, etc.
then the
business with 1,000 employees has a clear advantage over the business
with only
ten.For the big firm, regulatory
compliance is only one-thousandth of its workload.For the small firm, it’s a tenth.

Meanwhile, CHOI has had a reprieve, but its
close call must
certainly be a chilling incentive to other broadcasters to knuckle down
to the
CRTC’s wishes.